Wikipedia:Löschkandidaten/13. Mai 2015 und Juan Latino (Latinist): Unterschied zwischen den Seiten

Inhalt gelöscht Inhalt hinzugefügt

Inline

Version vom 3. September 2009, 14:31 Uhr

Juan Latino, born Juan de Sessa, (Baena, 1518 - Granada, 1596), was a professor at Granada during the sixteenth century, was the only black Latinist, scholar, and writer in the European Renaissance.

Life

Son of black slaves of the second Duke of Sessa, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, he went to Granada where he was educated together with his master's son and the grandson of another famous Gonzalo, El Gran Capitán. Juan Latino emphasized especially in classical languages and music. He attended together with Gonzalo to the subject of the famous grammarian Pedro de Mota, showing great abilities, the Duke himself commented on his dexterity: rara avis in terra corbo simillima nigro.

The University of Granada had been opened in 1526, five months after the coming of the emperor to the city, and after the papal bull, it began to confer degrees in 1533. In 1545, in the presence of the Archbishop, the listener of the Real Chancery, Conde de Tendilla, and many other gentlemen, Juan Latino received the degree of Bachiller. He was 28 years old in that time.

He was set free and received in Granada the Chair of grammar and latin language of the Cathedral, post that he held for twenty years. His literary and fiercest personal enemy, León Roque de Santiago, maintained that Juan Latino was born in Baena, son of a slave woman and the Duke of Sessa, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, father of his friend and protector Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, third of the same title.

One the houses he frequented to teach his varied grammatical teachings was property of the Duke's administrator, Licenciado Carleval, whose daughter, famous in the city because of her extraordinary beauty and fiancée by her father to Don Fernando de Valor, future Abén Humeya, received classes. The playwright Diego Ximénez del Enciso (1585-1633) composed about him and his love-affairs with his student and future white wife, the young Ana Carleval, the comedy Juan Latino. The strange interracial relation was fruitful and the marriage took place between 1547 and 1548.

Nonetheless, without the support of the Duke, it would have been unlikely to carry out so pintoresque union in the Spain of that age. Even with such support, it is not frequent in another ancient societies the union of a slave with a woman of the high society, which constitutes a note of glory in that Spanish society given the permissiveness.

Works

Latino published three volumes of poems between 1573 and 1585.^[1] He reflected on the black condition and refused a social hierarchy based on skin colour prejudices.

His poem Asturias Carmen, was dedicated by to Juan de Asturia after his victory over the Morisco insurrection in Granada, known as the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1572). In the text, Latino searched to establish the dignity of all black Africans, relating them to biblical Ethiopia and refusing the idea of natural slavery. He imagined white people subordinated in Ethiopia (a reversed irony) and exalted blackness in the final verses.

He has been hailed as one of the first writers to have used signifyin(g).^[1]

References

↑ ^a ^b The Signifying Monkey, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Oxford University Press, hardcover, page 90

Black Africans in Renaissance Europe ed. Thomas F. Earle and Kate J. P. Lowe [1]
Measuring the moment: strategies of protest in eighteenth-century Afro-English Writing by Keith Albert Sandiford[2]
The Black mind: a history of African literature By O. R. Dathorne []

[Category:Spanish academics]]]

[''The_Signifying_Monkey'',_Henry_Louis_Gates,_Jr-1] The Signifying Monkey, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Oxford University Press, hardcover, page 90

[1]